CHENNAI: Encouraged by the success of a tribal girl from a government school securing admission to IIT-Madras for the first time, the tribal welfare directorate is set to rope in a private firm to coach more students for getting into India’s premier institutions.
The firm will train Class 10, 11 and 12 students in Government Tribal Residential (GTR) schools and Ekalavya Model Residential (EMR) schools for competitive exams such as JEE, NEET, CUET and CLAT. Teachers will also be trained in effective coaching methods.
The target: at least 10 students qualifying for the top 200 NIRF-ranked colleges through JEE, along with fixed qualifying percentages for NEET, CUET and CLAT. Payment to the firm will be performance-based, linked to these results. The three-year project will cost around `2.5 crore, officials said.
Tamil Nadu has 31 government tribal high schools, 28 higher secondary schools and eight EMR higher secondary schools. The initiative will cover 5,500-7,000 students across these institutions. In-person coaching will be provided at 10 hub centres in select schools, with online classes streamed to nearby schools.
Students will also have access to doubt-clearing sessions, quizzes, weekly and mock tests, past years’ question papers, printed notes, solved answer sheets and video/animation-based lessons. An online repository will be created for both students and teachers, with digital tracking of individual progress.
Teacher training is a key component of the scheme, aimed at building sustained mentoring capacity in tribal schools. The directorate runs 320 schools from Classes 1 to 12, serving 25,337 students, with 54.66% of the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare department’s budget dedicated to education-related initiatives.
While several schemes are already in place to improve tribal education, officials say this project is designed to equip students with the skills, guidance and resources needed to secure admission in reputed colleges and universities.
Recently, A Rajeshwari, a student from the Malayali tribal community in Kalvarayan Hills, Salem, cleared the highly competitive JEE Advanced exam with an All India Rank of 417 in the ST category. She was the first from a Government Tribal Residential Higher Secondary school to secure admission to IIT-Madras.